Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： The McGurk effect is a typical audiovisual integration phenomenon, influenced by characteristics of physical stimuli, attentional allocation, the extent that individuals rely on visual or auditory information in processing, the ability of audiovisual integration, and language/culture differences. Key visual information that leads to the McGurk effect is mainly extracted from the mouth area of the talker. The McGurk effect implicates both audiovisual integration (which occurs in the early processing stage and is related to the activation of superior temporal cortex) and the conflict of the incongruent audiovisual stimuli (which occurs in the late processing stage and is related to the activation of inferior frontal cortex). Future studies should further investigate the influence of social factors on the McGurk effect, pay attention to the relationship between unimodal information processing and audiovisual integration in the McGurk effect, and explore the neural mechanisms of McGurk effect with computational modeling.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： The body ownership illusion (BOI) is associated with multisensory integration, including visuo-tactile, visuo- proprioceptive, tactile-proprioceptive, visual-interoceptive integration and so forth. A series of studies have demonstrated that BOI may be able to reduce acute and chronic pain. There are several key factors that influence the induction of subjective feeling of ownership over the fake body parts, such as synchronicity of multisensory integration, space between the real and fake body parts, the physical appearance of the fake body parts, a first-person perspective. These factors have also been proved to be critical in the effect of analgesia of BOI. In addition, BOI can be modulated by the perceived body/limb size, transparency of the body/limb and so on. The influence of these factors on pain is complex, which differs between healthy subjects and patients with chronic pain, various chronic pain states and the relevant body perception disturbances. Altered body representation represents one of the mechanisms associated with the analgesic impact of BOI. The neural mechanism of BOI on pain, however, still remains unknown, we propose that it is associated with cross-modal mirror therapy and visual analgesia. Thus based on the neural mechanisms of these two phenomenon, we suggest that the “body matrix” and the “pain matrix” might be involved. The concept of “body matrix” was proposed to interpret the induction of the sense of ownership and the complex relationship between representation of the body in the brain and the integrity of the body itself, which includes the insula and posterior parietal cortex. It processes and further integrates the sensory stimuli like visual, tactile, proprioceptive, interoceptive signals from the environment. To be specific, the induction of the sense of ownership could first activate the body matrix and then suppress the pain matrix in acute pain. In chronic pain, the analgesic effect may be related with the reversal of the cortical representation and functional disturbances. Moreover, the posterior parietal cortex may play a key role in these integrations, which needs to be further validated in fine-designed protocols. In summary, most of the researches support a link between embodied illusion and pain disorders, yet several studies didn’t find the analgesic effect of BOI. It might result from the experimental procedure that the artificial/fake hand was covered to avoid visual feedback, or may due to differences in the experimental settings of the control group. Future research topics may include the following aspects. Firstly, future research might want to consider more about the role of interoception in multisensory integration paradigms as exteroceptive signals may not suitable in patients with allodynia who are extremely sensitive to tactile stimuli. The usage of interoception enables the induction of sense of ownership without any tactile stimuli. Thus taking into account of interoception allows a better understanding of the contribution of interoception in bodily illusion and in pain modulation. Secondly, future studies need to identify the cognitive mechanism and neural substrates underlying the effect of BOI on pain. For instance, whether BOI analgesic effect has shared neural mechanisms with mirror therapy and visual analgesia needs further interrogation. Thirdly, how BOI affects pain varies differently in acute pain and chronic pain, and in different chronic pain conditions. Future research needs to shed further light on the identification of this complex phenomenon. Finally, robust and new paradigms of body ownership illusion are needed to further explore the full potential of BOI to modulate pain and to be applied in pain management in clinical populations.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Background: P-value is the most widely used statistical index for inference in science. A p-value greater than 0.05, i.e., nonsignificant results, however, cannot distinguish the two following cases: the absence of evidence or the evidence of absence. Unfortunately, researchers in psychological science may not be able to interpret p-values correctly, resulting in wrong inference. For example, Aczel et al (2018), after surveying 412 empirical studies published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and Psychological Science, found that about 72% of nonsignificant results were misinterpreted as evidence in favor of the null hypothesis. Misinterpretations of nonsignificant results may lead to severe consequences. One such consequence is missing potentially meaningful effects. Also, in matched-group clinical trials, misinterpretations of nonsignificant results may lead to false “matched” groups, thus threatening the validity of interventions. So far, how nonsignificant results are interpreted in Chinese psychological literature is unknown. Here we surveyed 500 empirical papers published in five mainstream Chinese psychological journals, to address the following questions: (1) how often are nonsignificant results reported; (2) how do researchers interpret nonsignificant results in these published studies; (3) if researchers interpreted nonsignificant as “evidence for absence,” do empirical data provide enough evidence for null effects? Method: Based on our pre-registration (https://osf.io/czx6f), we first randomly selected 500 empirical papers from all papers published in 2017 and 2018 in five mainstream Chinese psychological journals (Acta Psychologica Sinica, Psychological Science, Chinese Journal of Clinical Psychology, Psychological Development and Education, Psychological and Behavioral Studies). Second, we screened abstracts of these selected articles to check whether they contain negative statements. For those studies which contain negative statements in their abstracts, we searched nonsignificant statistics in their results and checked whether the corresponding interpretations were correct. More specifically, all those statements were classified into four categories (Correct-frequentist, Incorrect-frequentist: whole population, Incorrect-frequentist: current sample, Difficult to judge). Finally, we calculated Bayes factors based on available t values and sample sizes associated with those nonsignificant results. The Bayes factors can help us to estimate to what extent those results provided evidence for the absence of effects (i.e., the way researchers incorrectly interpreted nonsignificant results). Results: Our survey revealed that: (1) out of 500 empirical papers, 36% of their abstracts (n = 180) contained negative statements; (2) there are 236 negative statements associated with nonsignificant statistics in those selected studies, and 41% of these 236 negative statements misinterpreted nonsignificant results, i.e., the authors inferred that the results provided evidence for the absence of effects; (3) Bayes factor analyses based on available t-values and sample sizes found that only 5.1% (n = 2) nonsignificant results could provide strong evidence for the absence of effects (BF01 > 10). Compared with the results from Aczel et al (2019), we found that empirical papers published in Chinese journals contain more negative statements (36% vs. 32%), and researchers made fewer misinterpretations of nonsignificant results (41% vs. 72%). It worth noting, however, that there exists a categorization of ambiguous interpretations of nonsignificant results in the Chinese context. More specifically, many statements corresponding to nonsignificant results were “there is no significant difference between condition A and condition B”. These statements can be understood either as “the difference is not statistically significant”, which is correct, or “there is no difference”, which is incorrect. The percentage of misinterpretations of nonsignificant results raised to 64% if we adopt the second way to understand these statements, in contrast to 41% if we used the first understanding. Conclusion: Our results suggest that Chinese researchers need to improve their understanding of nonsignificant results and use more appropriate statistical methods to extract information from nonsignificant results. Also, more precise wordings should be used in the Chinese context.
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2018-09-07 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： 决策是每个人每天都会进行的活动。二择一时, 有人择一而终, 有人变换不定。这种个体差异可能与坚持性人格和认知灵活性有关。本研究旨在探讨这种行为特征背后的认知神经机制, 以便进一步理解决策变换中存在的个体差异。本研究采用了单变量和多变量体素形态学分析的方法分析了350名大学生(其中女性194人, 平均年龄19.97岁)在随机猜牌任务中的换牌频率与大脑灰质体积的相关情况, 探讨了坚持性人格特质和认知灵活性与换牌频率的关系, 并考察了两者在大脑灰质体积与换牌频率中的中介作用。单变量和多变量体素形态学分析结果都表明, 左侧后扣带回、右侧额中回、右侧额极和右侧脑岛区域的灰质体积可以预测被试的换牌频率; 坚持性人格和认知灵活性在其中起到了中介作用。这些结果阐释了换牌频率个体差异的认知机制和神经基础, 对理解为何有的人一味坚持, 而有的人灵活变换背后的原因提供了理论基础, 同时为开发改善非理性决策行为的方法提供了重要的参考价值。
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